Fight over Israel and Tony Kushner heats up

[oberliner]

A noted Yeshiva University historian is seeking to return the honorary degree she holds from the City University of New York after CUNY's board blocked a similar honor for the playwright Tony Kushner, citing his criticism of Israel.

After the news broke yesterday that Kushner's honorary degree had been blocked by the CUNY board, things have quickly escalated.

Ellen Schrecker of Yeshiva University fired off a letter of protest to the board of trustees asking how to return a 2008 honorary degree -- "the greatest honor I had ever received" -- to John Jay College, a CUNY school.

"I received my honorary degree from CUNY because of my scholarship on the McCarthy period, when over one hundred professors (including at least fifteen from the New York City municipal colleges) lost their jobs for political reasons," writes Schrecker. "I assume that no one within CUNY’s Board of Trustees or administration wants a repeat of those dark days. Certainly, the John Jay faculty and administration, whose judgment the CUNY Trustees overrode, realize the value of academic freedom today."

http://www.salon.com/news/israel/?story=/politics/war_room/2011/05/05/cuny_kushner_honorary_degree_update

[shira]

1. Tony Kushner, an Extremist, Can’t Represent CUNY

If his libelous statements against Israel were made by anyone outside the Jewish community, that person would be correctly labeled an anti-Semite. When you hold the State of Israel – a nation in a struggle for its survival from the beginning, a target for the misogynist, racist, anti-western, dictatorial regimes which surround it – to a standard you would hold no other nation under normal circumstances, let alone under such exigencies – and when you spew libel against our sole regional democratic ally for “crimes” concocted by delegitimizers, you are an anti-Semite.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2011/05/05/tony-kushner-an-extremist-can’t-represent-cuny/

[oberliner]

2. What's your take on this?

Do you have an opinion on the matter?

[shira]

3. That type of criticism is antisemitic in effect, even if not in intent

It fails the 3-D test...
http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-sharansky-f04.htm

As to the honorary degree, why not give it to Kushner if someone like Arafat "earned" a Nobel prize?

[oberliner]

4. Koch to CUNY: Boot trustee who attacked Kushner

NEW YORK (JTA) -- Ed Koch call for the City University of New York to terminate its relationship with a trustee who engineered the denial of an honorary degree to Tony Kushner because of the playwright's criticism of Israel.

"I can't think of a dumber academic action," the former New York mayor and one of Israel's most ardent supporters said in a letter Thursday to the chairman of the Board of Trustees. "What does Kushner receiving an award have to do with criticism of the State of Israel? I am a well-known supporter of that nation. What if I were denied an honorary degree because of my strong support for that state? That would make as much sense as denying Mr. Kushner a degree."

Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, a Republican appointee to the board, quoted from several Kushner statements in his appeal to the CUNY board at its most recent meeting in urging the board to remove the playwright's name from a list of honorees.

Neither Kushner nor anyone else was invited to speak in his defense

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/05/06/3087587/koch-to-cuny-boot-trustee-who-attacked-kushner